1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to circular saws employed for sawing very hard materials such as glass, ceramics, refractories and stone, and more particularly to a rigid circular wire saw and to an assembly for supporting, guiding and driving such.
2. Description of the Prior Art
There are no known devices utilizing a rigid circular wire saw as the cutting tool, although the prior art includes a number of devices utilizing flexible wire saws. Various methods are used for coating a wire saw with abrasives, using bonding resins, electroplating or sintering. However, in each case the wire cutting element that results is flexible. This flexibility produces problems in the use of the wire saw. Lateral flexing of the wire makes it difficult to accurately cut the hard workpiece materials, limits the wire surface speed and tends to be wasteful of abrasive material.
When used in cutting apparatus, such saws are necessarily limited to applications where extreme accuracy in following intricate shapes or patterns is not required, and allowance can be made for wasted workpiece materials. Thus, there exists a need for a device capable of the required accuracy and speed in sawing hard materials.